


these hands

by Beguile



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Fear, Gen, Introspection, Medicinal Drug Use, Night Terrors, PTSD, shaking hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-10 17:50:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20855819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beguile/pseuds/Beguile
Summary: Malcolm tries to hide them. Lay his hands down and his knuckles bounce like they’re knocking at a door.One-shot...currently.





	these hands

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Whumptober 2019 prompt: "shaking hands" 
> 
> May include other prompts as the month progresses. Enjoy!

* * *

Malcolm tries to hide them. He buries his hands in his pockets, under tabletops. He gestures while lecturing to give the illusion of purpose. He stretches his fingers regularly to relieve tension. But the shakes come back, rattling from his elbows to his fingertips, wobbling especially at the wrist. Lay them down and his knuckles bounce like they’re knocking at a door.

Used to be that the tremor was intermittent. Malcolm remembers taking notes in school and shaking as he reached the end of a sentence. A few months later and he stumbled over piano keys at a recital. Months after that, his hands were shaking at a dinner party, and Ainsley, sitting next to him, took hold of him under the table until he was still again. 

Doctors gave him the usual roster of recommendations: sleep, exercise, deep breathing, mindfulness. Those worked for a while, but the shakes always came back, and always came back worse. One eventually prescribed a muscle relaxant, and while that successfully controlled the tremor, it controlled everything else. Malcolm couldn’t concentrate. Visits with Dad were mostly spent passively absorbing Martin’s concern and oversharing. Ask him a question, Malcolm spilled his guts, every little thought in his head bubbling out of his mouth, and while Martin was annoyed, his beautiful son dull and ruined and zombified, there’s a look on his face Malcolm sees in his dreams sometimes. Martin’s eyes aglow with paternalistic affection because for a few precious moments between them, there is no baggage or past, there’s no cell. They’re together, and Martin has his full, undivided attention.

Leaving Martin brings a few blissful years of work. There are still the night terrors, the fears, the anxieties, but Malcolm finds his hands rest easy in his lap. They move with purpose from hip to holster to service weapon. Even losing his job isn’t enough to rattle him. Malcolm returns to his loft, his restraints, his hands only jerking out of control when the nightmares take him.

Brunch with Mom finds him shaking again, exactly the way he did when visiting Martin was the norm. Malcolm reaches for the teacup to stabilize himself. His fingernail catches on the saucer before he pulls back. Mom’s eyes are with his, and Malcolm wants to keep them that way. Keep her seeing what she wants to see – that he’s tired, that he’s haunted, but that it’s the old ghosts rattling him instead of the new visits seeping under his skin. His hands take up residence at his sides, out of view, and it isn’t until the snake hits him in the wrist that it occurs to Malcolm, along with a cascade of stupid thoughts as venom crashes his system, that sleight of hand is something Martin taught him. Getting other people to look away while the monster lurks in plain sight: that’s Martin Whitly’s teachings in a nutshell.

The interaction of whatever they give him at the hospital with liquor reproduces that cloudy, dreamy state of the muscle relaxants from when Malcolm was a teen. He stumbles into his apartment, rips off his shoes, answering all Dani’s questions with so many words, too many words. The nervous tremor’s moved to his tongue, and he’s spilling information like a busted dam, like arterial spatter, like snakes crawling out of a man’s mouth. Dani asking about sex comes at exactly the wrong time. Malcolm isn’t in a state to be deliberate about his words. The few that shake loose give her the wrong impression, and Malcolm can’t find a way to get to the right one.

But his hands are perfectly still as Dani buckles his wrist into place, and they lie perfectly still as he tucks himself into bed. And Malcolm lets himself enjoy those precious seconds before darkness takes him, to relish his body doing what he wants, being what he makes it, instead of what Martin forced him to become.

* * *

Happy reading!


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